6 Ways To Turn Your Vacation Into A Spanish Learning Venture

Traveling to a Spanish speaking country has always been the single biggest motivator to Spanish students; in fact, it’s perhaps the only reason most of us decided to even start learning the language. After all, what good is a language skill if you never wish to be where it’s spoken! What good is any skill if it’s never put to use? It’s a shame how so many of us consider it a divine right, as English speakers, to be understood everywhere we go, be it Mexico, Mongolia or even Mars. Now, traveling abroad is a costly affair and not all are lucky enough to make it. But what if you are? Well, then you really are lucky since one such trip can accelerate your Spanish learning like nothing else can.

Don’t be a cookie-cutter tourist; spice up your trip with some Spanish
Photo credit: Carlos Van Vegas licensed CC BY 2.0

If you’re planning a trip to South America, you’re in for an incredible experience. Whether you’re visiting the highest peaks of Ecuador, the vast plains of Argentina, or the glorious beaches of Uruguay, a fantastic vacation is all but guaranteed. But a trip to South America isn’t all about fun and games. You’ll have an unparalleled opportunity to immerse yourself in the Spanish language, too (which, of course, is a hell lot of fun in itself). Nothing compares to immersion in efficiency when it comes to learning a new language, so prepare for the opportunity in advance to make the most of it. Check out these 6 ways you can turn that South American vacation into an exciting (and productive!) language learning adventure as advised by a good friend, Dusty.

1. Take some classes before you go

You will make things a whole lot easier and more enjoyable for yourself by brushing up on your language skills before arriving in a Spanish-speaking country. You will quite literally put your brain to work from the moment you arrive–navigating the airport, talking to customs officers, and finding your way to a taxi or other transportation. Even if you still consider yourself a novice at Spanish (if you’re not sure test your level here), you’ll feel more comfortable and will be able to get around more confidently if you recently took some classes. And no, you don’t necessarily have to spend an arm and a leg at language schools. Hooked up to the Internet, you can devour an ungodly number of Spanish language tutorials in every shape and size without spending a dime. There are resources all around you. Youtube, blogs, podcasts, free ebooks...you name it!

2. Hang with the locals

If you’re going to any decent-sized city in South America, you may be surprised at how easy it is to find a chain restaurant you recognize, a coffee shop that looks just like your favorite one back home, and a group of foreigners speaking English. If you’re like most travelers, you’ll be tempted to visit those places and spend your time with the English-speakers. Avoid the comfort of what you know and branch out to where the locals are instead. Grab a seat on an open bench in the Plaza de Armas, or on the steps of the main Cathedral. If you’re walking around looking for a place for dinner, choose the restaurant (or hole in the wall) that’s filled with locals, not tourists. That’s where the action is. What’s the point of spending a bomb travelling thousands of miles to an exotic foreign destination and yet seek everything as it used to be back home! If you just aren’t willing to mingle with the locals, you might as well stay home, warm and cozy, and save your precious dollars.

3. Volunteer your time

Volunteer programs help your Spanish in more ways than you ever realized
Photo credit: Trees For The Future licensed CC BY 2.0

There are countless opportunities to volunteer, no matter what your skills are or how much time you have to spare. Volunteer at an elementary school for the afternoon, help build a house for a day, or donate a whole week of your time to rescuing sea turtles. If you have an interest that you never get to pursue back home, why not find a way to incorporate it into your vacation time? There are a growing number of volunteer vacation opportunities available throughout the continent, so you can even book your entire trip to focus on doing good in the community you’re visiting. The idea not only sounds altruistic and exotic, it even adds a touch of adventure to your travel experience, giving you an incredible amount of bragging rights back home.

Imagine a gringo in Mexico, sporting a sombrero and a pair of binos and a point-and-shoot happily trotting around with a bunch of others like him in a tour van with an English-speaking guide on a cookie-cutter package tour. Then imagine a solo traveller losing his way someplace in rural Chiapas giving a little English lesson at a local elementary school, celebrating the Day of the Dead at the village church, and hitching a ride to the nearby flea market with a bunch of villagers to dicker over a pair of huaraches. Which one of the two had a richer experience? Which one of the two would you be more excited to listen to when both are talking about their trips?

4. Take a tour...in Spanish

Few vacations are complete without at least one or two tours. And if you’re going to take a tour, why not use it as an opportunity to practice your Spanish? If you feel that your skills aren’t advanced enough for this exercise, try a lower-risk version of it, so to speak. Go to an art museum and get the audio guide in Spanish. Many of these are free or cost a nominal fee, so you won’t have to make a big financial investment or miss out on an English-led tour at an attraction you’re especially excited to learn about. Nothing shouts “gringo” more than a bunch of blissfully clueless men and women (again with cheap sombreros and floral-print shirts to complete the look) huddled around an English-speaking tour guide. You must step out of your comfort zone if you intend to acquire any skill. Refusing to face Spanish in the real world when you are lucky enough to land the opportunity is not such a good idea if you’re looking to learn it.

5. Visit an art gallery or museum

When visiting one of these places, give yourself plenty of time to enjoy it. If there’s a brochure about one of the exhibits, read through it. Take the time to move from piece to piece, reading the signage and individual descriptions throughout the collections. Pull out your Spanish dictionary and move at a leisurely pace. If there are placards in English and Spanish, work hard to read them in Spanish first, understand the descriptions, then read the English to confirm you’re on the right track. Art galleries and museums can shed light on where a nation or group of people has been or where they’re going. You can learn about the history of indigenous people, how religion has affected their culture, what contemporary artists are saying, and more, depending on the type of establishment you visit. Many Latin American countries have kid-friendly museums too, so children can learn and play at the same time. No language acquisition program is complete without a proper understanding of and appreciation for the culture that the language represents. No cultural exploration is complete without at least a working knowledge of its history. And no cultural pursuit is complete without a visit to a good museum. Latin America has many. Do not skip them even if museums generally bore you.

6. Take things slow

The number one thing that can set your Spanish-learning efforts off course during your South American vacation is moving too fast. If you sit down to order lunch at a restaurant and just point to something on the menu, you’ve just lost a chance to practice your reading, listening, and speaking skills. Try moving at a slower pace, instead. In this lunchtime scenario, arrive at the restaurant and start studying the menu. Order a drink first, then ask the server if they recommend something for lunch. Ask about their specials or what dishes are most popular. After placing your order, keep the menu and continue reading it. Listen to the people around you. Not only will you be practicing your Spanish, but you’ll be learning more about the culture and the local way of life.

Dusty is a full-time freelance writer who contributes to the Listen & Learn network. She is a world traveler who especially loves Latin American culture and food.

Spanish Language Route: Learn Spanish Using 3D Adventure Game

Just saw this and had to share...

Teaser de 'Spanish Language Route'

• Teaser de 'Spanish Language Route'

It will be available September 2013 and will contain linguistic exercises from levels A1 to C2.

From the article on RTVE.es:

Aprender jugando es una técnica empleada en muchos niveles educativos, también en el ámbito de los idiomas. Una empresa española está desarrollando una ambiciosa apuesta en la enseñanza de idiomas, la Spanish Language Route (en español Ruta de la Lengua Española), una aventura gráfica en 3D en la que, con la excusa de rescatar el diario de Cervantes, el alumno-jugador  pasa múltiples etapas de aprendizaje de español.

El viaje a la Edad Media y a parte del Siglo de Oro español (el siglo XVI) con soporte multimedia en 3D comienza con el robo del diario de Cervantes. El usuario, que puede acceder al juego en su propia lengua, como inglés, francés o ruso, por ejemplo, tiene que escoger un aspecto (avatar) y comenzar una aventura por el Camino de Santiago.

This looks like it will be a lot of fun. I can't wait to try it!

Exercise Videos in Spanish

Challenge your mind and your body by exercising using Spanish language workout routines.

Recently I was browsing one of my favorite YouTube channels, OnceTV México, when I saw a show called Energía. This caught my eye because I work out at least five times a week and am always looking for new routines.

When I googled the show, I discovered that not only do they have regular exercise shows (cardio & strength), but also yoga, pilates, and a couple of other types as well. 

Del sitio

Energía invita a las mujeres a conservar su salud física y mental mediante distintas técnicas para realizar en casa sin necesidad de aparatos o equipo especial. Se busca con ello un equilibrio en la relación con el cuerpo y el bienestar al reforzar aspectos espirituales, de fuerza muscular y cuidado cardiaco. 

Have fun working out your Spanish language skills and your body!

Links

OnceTV México Energía 

OnceTV YouTube Channel

By the way, I discovered the videos by browsing the channel's upload feed. 

Stay Silent And Get Fluent...Quickly!

Immersion seems so natural and yet there hardly seems to be any Spanish-learning methodology more controversial than this! Why exactly? Well, apparently there doesn’t exist a definitive answer yet but it can be vehemently affirmed that there exist more plausible evidences proving its benefits than the contrary. Actually, even the academic purists vouch for total immersion. Where, then, do we disagree? That bone of contention is called “grammar”. While academics consider it the be-all of any Spanish language acquisition program, successful polyglots unanimously counter it with what they call “silent, no-frills input”.

Ever since we started learning a language that was not our own (English for most of us), we have been wired with the idea that grammar is the start and end of learning a language. Let us shock you now with an assertion: This is precisely the opposite of what really is. Yes, it is possible to get fluent in any human language, let alone Spanish, while never turning a single page of that grammar book! To shock you even further, learning a language without touching grammar is a more efficient and quicker way and the only natural way of doing it. And we are not even the first ones laying this claim. This assertion is backed by rock-solid linguistic research and results experienced by established polyglots all over the world learning all kinds of language.

An example from my life

So, back to learning Spanish. Where do we start if not with grammar? The most efficient idea, which we will be harping on shamelessly throughout our conversation, is to doggedly focus on absorbing the language to the point of saturation to begin with. Note that this article prefer using the word, “absorbing” instead of “learning” when it comes to Spanish, or any language for that matter. There’s a massive difference.

Learning is what I did with Sanskrit when I was in high school. Did I like Sanskrit? Hell, no! But I had to learn out of compulsion. And I did! Crammed up every single word in the ugly little textbook and all the complex case-tables mandated by the Sanskrit grammar and actually scored good grades on my tests. In fact, when it came to tests, I fared better in Sanskrit than in English or even my mother tongue, Hindi! But, was it any useful? No. I was never able to have a 30-second elevator chat with someone in Sanskrit while I could rattle off in English or Hindi for hours at a stretch.

The silent-period is a wonder-drug for fluent Spanish!
Photo credit: Knight Foundation licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

So where does this leave us? What I did with Sanskrit here is called learning, while I had simply absorbed English and Hindi. What I am trying to establish here is that learning a language is reading and memorizing words and grammar rules for a purpose. A short-term goal, e.g., a test. This can get you good grades on a test but will never make you practical in that tongue. If you wish to get fluent in any language and be able to converse with native speakers with ease, what you need is absorption. Soak up the language. Listen to it and let it roil inside you. Saturate yourself with the input to a point of absolute comfort. That’s when you should consider practicing the language and referring to its grammar.

Silent-period

We all know and have been told countless times that absorption is how we acquired our mother tongue and hence it is the most natural methodology. Putting it in practice for a second language like Spanish, however, gets more radical. The idea is to not attempt to speak a word of Spanish nor read any grammar for a pretty long time. Some call this the “silent period”. During this silent period, all efforts must be invested in listening. Listen to Spanish. Authentic Spanish. As much as possible. Watch telenovelas, listen to podcasts, listen to Spanish music, watch Spanish movies...just listen incessantly. Only when the time is right, should you consider producing some Spanish.

Break your silence when the time is right

The obvious next question would be, when? Well, when the time is right, you just know it. Think of it as an extremely annoying and ubiquitous TV commercial. Your guts hate that commercial and the moment it comes on TV, you curse under your breath. But just because it’s being shown over and over again, day in and day out, did you notice something? It started growing on you! Ever found yourself subconsciously humming the jingle in your shower or while you are cooking? That’s the power of your subconscious. You absorbed that commercial. The words, the sentence structures, the patterns, the intonation, everything. And, only when you are saturated, does it become your second nature to reproduce the sounds you absorbed and you start humming them unknowingly.

It’s the same with Spanish. When you are too loaded, you will start producing automatically. Not only will you start speaking spontaneously, but you’ll also start developing an ear for what word combination or pattern sounds right and what just doesn’t. All this when you haven’t started studying the rules governing the sentence structures in Spanish! In other words, you will recognize the very signature of Spanish and this is all it takes for you to be eventually fluent like the natives. Call it overkill if you will, but if it worked for me, I am sure it will for you too.

And when is that?

So again, when is the right time? Some say it’s 10,000 hours while some say it’s 800. The numbers would largely depend on your individual knack and environment and our advice would be to steer clear of any number written-in-stone. There’s no magic count at which you’ll suddenly start rattling in Spanish like a native speaker. This is, instead, a very personal and subjective concept. As a thumb-rule, we would still recommend no less than 500 hours of silent period before you even think of taking the plunge.

Again, what is immensely important is that these 500 hours must be evenly spaced out and must be consistent over a period of time. What is meant is that if you spend 8 hours watching telenovelas on the first day and then only 30 minutes the next day and skip it completely on the third day, don’t expect any miracles. It’s better, instead, to spend an equal amount of time, even it it’s as little as only 2 hours, every day without any compromise whatsoever until you hit the 500-hour mark (or 800 or 1,000).

Oh, and before we forget grammar, do use it. But only as a reference to understand anything that confuses you, not as a homework. Our suggestion, start using grammar only after you are comfortable conversant in Spanish, only in order to polish and buff-up your language skills. Isn’t this what you did to your native lingo anyways? You were already fluent in your mother tongue way before you were taught the first grammar rule for that language. Remember the same for Spanish and you should be able to fool the natives with your accent in no time.

The Laziest Way To Conquer Spanish

What’s going to be under discussion today is set to radically and fundamentally change the way you approach the Spanish language as a learner. To most purists, this article should read as nothing short of an academic blasphemy but if you manage to believe what we believe and what’s backed by solid, empirical study, acquiring Spanish or any other language of the world is not for the serious learners. The lazier you are, the easier it gets for you; best if you dig all things that come to you on a platter without any effort whatsoever on your part. Stumped? Bear with us and you’ll soon see the inherent sense in this nonsense.

Dr. Krashen’s input hypothesis

Get a crazy amount of input before you start speaking Spanish
Photo credit: Tim licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

The wonder drug this article hinges on is a philosophy in linguistics known as the “input hypothesis”. This is essentially a bunch of 5 hypotheses rolled into one, the gist being that the one and only way to the Holy Grail (read native-level fluency) of language-acquisition is getting smothered by an overwhelming amount of input (reading and listening) in the target language (Spanish in our context) without producing (speaking, talking, etc.) any bit of it at all for at least the initial phase.

In case you are wondering how fluency could ever be attained, without even practicing the Spanish that you absorb during the input, look no further than your very own childhood. Don’t forget that you didn’t utter a single word of your native lingo for a good two years or so while solely being bombarded with constant input from around you. Did that help? Well, it must have done a hell of a job as it is nearly impossible for you to now forget your mother tongue after those years of foundation-building!

If this is still not solid enough reasoning to win your vote, let me tell you where this hypothesis came from. It is a world-renowned linguist and educator who goes by the name of Dr. Stephan Krashen. The fact that he has published over 300 books and research papers in the field of second language acquisition and that he goes to the University of Southern California as a Professor emeritus, should be enough to tell you that this man means business.

How much input is enough input?

OK, now down to the brass-tacks. So, how is this “input hypothesis” to be applied to your leal life Spanish program? Well, it couldn’t get any clearer; the first and the most important thing is to build the ultimate immersion environment around yourself and get an insane amound of input in Spanish, day in and day out. It is also equally important that you set your mind around “acquiring” Spanish and not “learning.” This step is deceptively simple so be careful. What acquiring means is what we did with our mother tongue when we were toddlers. To your Spanish program it means that you shouldn’t calculate how much time to dedicate to Spanish if you want to acquire it. Acquisition cannot be a deliberate activity. It has to be infinitely immersive.

Listen to hours of Latino music, read pages and pages of Spanish novels and newspapers, watch hours of Spanish videos, movies and telenovelas. Essentially don’t attach a rock-solid timeframe to any of these activities. Spanish should flow freely in your world. If your assign hours to any of these activities, you are mostly setting yourself up for failure. Instead of targeting to listen to Spanish music for an hour everyday, you should be targeting listening to only Spanish music whenever you listen to music, regardless of how long. Similarly, I wouldn’t instruct myself to read El Universal® for 30 minutes a day; instead, I will mandate myself to pick El Universal® (or, El País® or some other Spanish paper) and nothing else every time I wish to read a newspaper. This is how Spanish becomes a part of your life. This how Spanish becomes your life. This is how you acquire Spanish. by first allowing Spanish to acquire you!

The worst approach

As if conspiring to keep us from ever becoming bilingual, our schools and colleges have always stressed on grammar and vocabulary like our life depended on them. We are institutionalized to first study and “master” the billion rules of grammer before we open the taps of Spanish input. And then the traditional next step as dictated by academicians around the world is to produce content in Spanish (poetry recitation, forced conversation, essay writing, you name it). Only once we have done a certain amount of output as mandated by our teachers, are we introduced to extensive input, such as reading Spanish stories, listening to Spanish music, well, basically all the fun stuff we can imagine. The sequence is so perfectly reversed that it almost seems deliberate!

The right approach

The natural order of things should be exactly the reverse of what we traditionally do in schools. So, the first step becomes tons and tons of fun stuff in a phase called “input phase”. Just listen and read and listen and read. No talking, no writing, no essays, no recitations. The ultimate couch-potato’s promised land of milk and honey! Only once comfortable with this phase (your comprehension abilities will tell you, don’t worry about when), it’s time to start producing. Imitate native speakers, recite Spanish poetry, sing Spanish songs, write Spanish essays, talk in Spanish, chat in Spanish.

In short, just barf out all the Spanish that you have been acquiring through silent input over all these months. The last step, interestingly, happens to be grammar. Yes, you were speaking fluent English (or whatever your native tongue is) way before those monsters buried you under piles of grammar rules. Grammar is never the be-all of any language. It should only be a tool used to perfect your speech and writing once you are well-versed with the language in every practical sense.

Grammar is indispensible. It is grammar that gives a literary flair to your Spanish. It is grammar that tells you how Spanish changes colors when moved from the books to the streets. But the right time to scratch under the surface for grammar is in the end and not in the beginning. A sufficient amount of input is all you need to be able to tell what word sequence sounds correct and what doesn’t.

So, strap your boots and dive head-on into the ocean of Spanish before you even think of grammar. until you are conversant enough, stow that heavy, red book away – out of sight, out of reach. Just take in the Spanish around you. Soak it all up. Have fun. And enjoy as you get fluent phrase by phrase, word by word, absolutely unaware. Think of a lazier way to acquire Spanish? I bet you can’t.

2 Ways To Weave More Spanish Around You

So long as you desire to build more Spanish around you, there is no dearth of means of doing so. We have discussed several excellent methods of creating a highly immersive environment right where you live without spending a fortune. Today, we will discuss two more ways that can, well, intensify our Spanish immersion endeavors and take us to a whole new level of absorption. In line with our principles of austerity and engagement, these can be implemented for free and can potentially engage you for hours at a stretch, thus injecting more Spanish into you. As said before, Spanish must invade every aspect of your lifestyle.

Is there enough Spanish around you?

It has always been stressed that the key to near-perfect immersion is employing Spanish in everything that we would otherwise normally do in English or any other language. At least as far as possible. So, you have built up a massive collection of Spanish DVDs, are watching an insane amount of Spanish movies and Spanish telenovelas on TV, reading only El Universal® instead of The Times®, devouring tons of Spanish novels and comics, and have set your laptop, Facebook®, Google®, etc. to Spanish. Awesome! Let’s take a step back and think. Could we still be missing out on anything that is yet to be turned into Spanish? Any hidden opportunity? Think hard enough and you’ll soon see, there always remains something overlooked and today, we will review 2 such areas.

The philosophy of immersion is simple: Nothing you do must ever be done using anything but Spanish. Of course, you cannot spend every waking minute of your life studying Spanish, reading books, listening to music, watching movies, and reviewing flashcards only. While these activities should account for a major portion of your day, almost certainly you still have some gaps in your schedule and it is these gaps that we will attempt to fill with Spanish here. Think about how much time you spend relaxing with recreational indoor games and think about how much time you spend in your kitchen. Even if you don’t, it’s worth considering. Let’s see how these activities can be translated into Spanish to give you a seamless immersion.

Play games with Spanish

Scrabble® is the best game for acquiring Spanish vocabulary stress-free
Photo credit: hdaniel licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Most of us spent a major portion of our formative years playing Scrabble®, Hangman®, Monopoly®, and countless other board games. These games were more than just recreation and entertainment. They shaped up our childhood. They were the subtle hands behind our improved skills, like logical reasoning, mathematical aptitude, and most importantly, vocabulary.

Yes, the impact of games like Scrabble® and Hangman® on vocabulary acquisition can hardly be denied. Imagine the results if you start playing these games in Spanish and constantly strive for perfection. And strive you will because that’s the very virtue of games; they are built to kick your butts until winning becomes your habit. They did wonders to my Spanish vocabulary and, I am sure, won’t disappoint you either.

If multimedia games are your poison, almost every conceivable title today, leastwise the most well-known, major labels, comes with a Spanish version. Build a discipline to play whatever you play, in Spanish and only Spanish. I admit playing an intensive MMRPG in an alien lingo would not do much for your odds at winning in the beginning, but a few losses are honestly no big deal if you are learning Spanish. Given enough time (and it won’t be too long), you will come to grow more confident and the Spanish instructions of your favorite game would become second nature to you.

Personally, I would still prefer the traditional technology-proof route. There cannot be a cheaper alternative to Spanish board games, when it comes to stress-free recreational learning within one’s home. It doesn’t matter even if you need to cheat and use the dictionary in the beginning. no matter how you play, it’s impossible not to absorb at least a fraction of Spanish that hits you during the course of each game. Even if you acquire just one word after playing Scrabble® using the dictionary for a whole hour, treat yourself. No learning is small learning. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Build Spanish in your kitchen – meal by meal

Why spare your kitchen?
Photo credit: Sam Felder licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

If you enjoy cooking as much as I do (just kidding; I hate cooking), you are probably spending at least no less than an hour in the kitchen everyday. Why not include this wonderful space in your otherwise partially immersed environment? There’s a lot of room for Spanish in this space, trust me. To start with, try labeling all cans, containers, and bottles in Spanish. So, you can have labeled cans containing azúcar (sugar), sal (salt), salvia (sage), etc. sitting in your larder constantly pumping you with effortless Spanish day in and day out. Wasn’t that easy?

Another excellent way to add more Spanish to your life the delicious way is to try cooking in Spanish. Just mine the Internet for some delicious recipes written completely in Spanish and cook off them. This might be a bit exasperating at first but over time, you’ll notice that most words repeat over and over again and hence stick to your memory without any effort. These would be the words for most cooking-related activities like broiling, boiling, heating, chopping, and so on. Just be careful with the recipes at least in the beginning so as not to misinterpret or overlook anything or else you might end up with something horribly inedible on your plate!

One recreational and the other delicious, these immersion ideas are sure to give the laziest of you enough Spanish in your life to keep you motivated until you acquire perfect fluency. Let me know if your experience has been anything but uninspiring.

Whackiest Ways Of Building Spanish Around You

An insane amount of Spanish language input is warranted for any sustainable level of fluency and an insane amount of input calls for insane methods. If your imagination is wild enough, you will see there are more ways of building Spanish around you in your home country than an ignorant expat living in Spain or Mexico could enjoy. This article is all about exploring some of the whackier and unconventional immersion methods. These practices will change your lifestyle in some of the most radical ways but they come with a promise of native-like fluency in the most organic way. The good news is, they are all easy to implement!

Spanish language in your chores

Add a touch of Spanish to your daily chores
Photo credit: David Reber licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

This is simple. Just take time to draw a time-table for your daily activities and put up copies on your fridge, your bedroom wall, your study, everyplace practically possible in your vicinity. The only twist is that this horario (time-table) must be in Spanish.

Use aids if you need to – dictionary, online translation service, whatever you require. Just be sure to refer to it before starting any activity (like, doing the dishes, doing yardwork, having breakfast, doing laundry, and so on) on a daily basis.

Repeatedly seeing the Spanish of what you are going to do, even passively, will help you unknowingly assimilate a lot of Spanish into your lifestyle without any groundbreaking efforts. Change your schedule once in a while to reflect new priorities and absorb new vocabularies as easily.

By the way, as convention, time-tables in Spanish use verbs in their most original, unconjugated form, i.e., the infinitive. This should make life easier for you and help you absorb Spanish verbs without being put-off by distracting conjugations. If, however, you feel this method is working for you better than expected, it won’t hurt to experiment with conjugations a little even if that means going against the norm. All that matters is that you should be learning Spanish – regardless of how.

Talk to yourself...in Spanish

Befriend your shadow and learn Spanish
Photo credit: oddharmonic licensed CC BB-SA 2.0

Now this one is seriously whacky. You run the risk of quickly being labeled loco (crazy) doing this especially if you don’t live alone. This idea involves you using Spanish with yourself for a few minutes everyday (the longer, the better) where you play the parts of two people in a dialog. For example, you first ask a question to an imaginary friend and then play the part of that imaginary friend and answer the question to yourself.

Doing this in Spanish is extremely beneficial to you if you have some amount of experience with basic Spanish already. Try to perform these rehearsals in front of un espejo (a mirror) for a slightly better impact as you can easily monitor your facial expressions while speaking Spanish this way. The best thing about this technique is that you will no more depend on another native speaker in order to practise your Spanish, particularly helpful to those who live in places like India or Mongolia.

This activity can easily go hand-in-hand with the previous one, i.e., drawing time-table in Spanish. Try talking to yourself about each of the to-do on your list before actually doing them, using your current level of grammar and vocabulary. You might also consider making it more amusing by adding some nonsense to your monologues, e.g., slangs, etc. That way, you also soak up some useful colloquialism as you go. Too many birds with one stone? Your creativity is the only limit to how immersive your Spanish can get.

Sing to yourself in Spanish

Singing in Spanish is both engaging and educative
Photo credit: Brian Kelley licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

This is a slight modification over the previous idea of talking to yourself. Since music is the most entertaining teacher, singing to yourself in Spanish is an excellent way of weaving Spanish into your life.

For this, of course, it is important that you first listen to Spanish songs, a lot of Spanish songs...in fact, only Spanish songs. And there are enough number of masterpieces in every genre in Spanish to ensure you don’t feel too nostalgic about English. Sing while in the bath, sing while in the kitchen, sing while sitting on the can. There are ample number of moments that could be effectively invested to this wonderful immersion technique.

You can start by murmuring some familiar Spanish song and then, to make it even more effective, graduate to singing the same song with a slightly modified lyrics using any newly acquired vocabulary. There’s no better way of absorbing new words in Spanish. You don’t have to make absolutely perfect sense with your experimental lyrics so feel free to play around. Just make sure you do this only in Spanish and do it a lot! And, of course, you definitely don’t need to be a good singer as long as you can stand your own voice.

Spanish language in online research

We all have used the Internet in varying degrees for researching random items of interest and one online resource that has grown synonymous to research is Wikipedia. Despite the slight cloud that hangs over it’s accuracy and content validity, we must admit Wikipedia is an essential tool in our online research arsenal.

The good thing about Wikipedia is that it is available in more languages than can even be listed down and Spanish is one of them. So, switching to Wikipedia in Spanish will immensely add to not only our Spanish vocabulary and knowledge of specialized jargon in Spanish, but also add a new dimension to your immersion.

Use Twitter, Learn Better

An insane amount of input in Spanish is your ticket to fluency and one of the simplest ways of going into an immersion overdrive is right under your nose: The social network! You heard that right. Total immersion means just that. Total. Absolute. What a waste, in that case, to still be using services like Twitter® and Facebook® in English when they are all available in Spanish without any compromise whatsoever in functionality! If your goal is to eventually speak the Spanish language like you were born with it, spare nothing. Not even your social life. Spanish must invade every aspect of your lifestyle no matter what.

When addiction is good

Make your social network work for you!
Photo credit: Tanja Scherm licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

By now you must have guessed where this is going. That the social network is addictive, is no secret today. We all have stories to tell if asked about the amount of time we have spent glued to our Facebook® and Twitter® feeds everyday. What we never realized, though, is how this addiction can be made to work for us! This addiction can be even more serious if you are a smartphone user and have your social networking accounts configured on your handheld.

So how much time do you think you spend on these sites as a daily average? If you have a computer at home, another at work, and a smartphone in between, all wired to suck you into your virtual world at your slightest fancy, chances are you are not spending less than an hour living Facebook® and/or Twitter® every day. Imagine the result if this window of opportunity were to be exploited to work for you! Imagine if spending more time on your social networks could mean learning more Spanish! Why detox when the addiction can itself work for you? Confused? Trust me, the idea is as simple as it gets.

Make them speak Spanish

In one of the earlier posts on easy Spanish immersion, we explored how switching your Operating System to the Spanish language works wonders for subtle input. On similar lines, your immersion environment will be more, well, immersive if you go beyond the OS switch to Spanish in as many things around you as practically possible. And one of the easiest means of achieving this state of Nirvana is by switching to Spanish on each of your social network accounts. Since, most of use Facebook® and Twitter® way more heavily than any other network, it pays to switch them to Spanish. So, “profile” becomes perfil, “message” becomes mensaje, “search” becomes buscar, and in the most unobtrusive way possible, Spanish takes over your virtual life before you even know it.

This sounds more difficult than it actually is. You might think it will get frustrating to have to look up the links and menu options in the dictionary every time you log into your accounts but trust me it won’t. Your brain is an amazing device and adapts to the new language incredibly fast. Since, the frequency with which you encounter the same options in Spanish is reasonable high, they will sink in and be a part of your regular vocabulary just like their English counterparts in no time. It worked for me. Why just settle with Facebook® or Twitter®? Go beserk, switch everything to Spanish...Google®, Gmail®, whatever you use regularly. Make Spanish a part of your online lifestyle.

Learning Spanish in 140 letters

Another very interesting method that I exploited successfully, thanks to Ramses of The Language Dojo, is to subscribe to Spanish-speakers on Facebook® or Twitter®. This works way better on Twitter® as subscribing to random persons’ tweets is completely unobtrusive because you don’t have to add them as friends like you have to on Facebook®. All you need to do is identify some prolific Spanish-language Twitter®-users and follow them. Then you can go a step further and add some of those whom these users follow, and so on. This way, you will have a constant stream of Spanish texts that you can read and practise translating to gain not only language proficiency but also an insight into the Hispanic culture as most tweets reflect Spanish as spoken in the streets. The most effective way is to follow users from the country whose dialect you intend to eventually master. That way you will be exposed to the target dialect of Spanish right from the start.

The biggest benefit of Twitter® in this context is what many would call its biggest limitation: Its 140-character limit on tweets. You don’t want the burn-out that hits you when you are dumped with a huge 500-letter text in an alien language forcing you to open the dictionary dozens of times. Short, crisp tweets mean you will be able to understand new words without always having to open the dictionary and the absorption is going to be more subtle and less frustrating. And throw in the bonus that comes in the form of interesting cultural insight these tiny texts could offer into the native users’ lives. I have often learned about important goings-on and current affairs in the Hispanic world exclusively through Twitter® and the irony is, I get a much better depth and feel of the news reading those short tweets than I do reading more detailed accounts offered by news sites!

Hope this article has given your thought process a new direction and inspired you further in your Spanish-acquisition endeavor. It just can’t get any lazier. Just take the plunge and let the never-ending stream of tweets condition your mind.

Spanish Everyday, Spanish Everywhere

Welcome to yet another post on Spanish language immersion. Your visit here indicate that you are a lazy yet serious learner of this beautiful language and I am hoping you are making reasonable progress in your endeavor. Uncanny as it sounds, being able to communicate in Spanish as comfortably as native speakers doesn’t have to be as frustratingly difficult as them academicians would have us believe. I have always advocated total immersion as the only route to the Holy Grail of native-level proficiency. The benefits of immersion are applicable to Spanish as much as they do to any other language including our native tongue.

Total immersion is no rocket science

Live the Spanish language everyday
Photo credit: Paul Hamilton licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Immersing yourself in Spanish is the only and, luckily, the quickest way to attain every language learner’s Nirvana. Over the past few posts on learning Spanish via immersion, we have already explored some quite powerful immersion techniques, i.e., music, movies, television, books, etc.

Here, we explore some more. It will only help to note that I am not inventing these techniques on my own. What I have done, instead, is explore the possibility of using Spanish for and in everything I do using English. So, in effect, I am just exploring things that I would usually do in English and start doing the very same things in Spanish. Easy-peasy! Now this doesn’t sound like something you cannot do, does it? In fact, if you look around and reflect closely enough, you will easily discover many more ways of building Spanish around you which could immensely help our community of learners.

Podcasts for that input overdose

Spanish language podcasts are best for immersive audio input
Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

One very ubiquitous immersion tool that I missed out on in my earlier posts is podcasts. There are tons of wonderful free podcasts out there for the discerning listener that can give your ears the desperately needed acclimatization for the Spanish sound system or accent.

As with other methods, understanding every sentence, or any at all, is far from important in the beginning. Just focus on the rhythm, the intonation, the music of the language. Make it your second nature to be able to tell Spanish from any other language in the world, however close. Even as little as 30 minutes of listening a day will cast its spell on you and the magic will manifest in as little as 6 months if you are consistent enough.

I would also like to point here that you must be careful while choosing the right podcast for this purpose. If acquiring Spanish is your goal, the podcast you subscribe to must have authentic, native speakers from the country whose dialect you wish to eventually emulate. It is very important to avoid non-native speech as it will potentially give you a train-wreck of an accent, not to mention the utter inability to ever tell Spanish from its close cousins. Also, no matter what your level of Spanish is, always gun for podcasts where Spanish is being spoken at a natural, native pace. Most podcasts, particularly those aimed at learners, tend to have conversations at ridiculously slow rates of speech, not to mention the dumbed down vocabulary. Not only is this detrimental to your learning, but will also keep you ignorant of how Spanish is really spoken by real men and women. Remember that your sole motive here must be to develop an ear for the Spanish sounds. You got to to hit a stage where you can catch the drift even when half-asleep and everything sounds more or less fuzzy to you.

Label your world!

Post-its® are great for Spanish vocabulary
Photo credit: Spark Truck licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Another powerful technique for absolute immersion is labeling your surroundings. Post-It® was the noblest of all inventions in human history from a Spanish learner’s standpoint. Make labels for every conceivable object in your environment both at work as well as back home. I can understand how silly this might sound to the rookie learner but the immersion effects of this activity is understated at best. This is the quickest and easiest method to remember the Spanish for some of the most useful words in your daily life. This is also one of the least intrusive ways to unknowingly make Spanish integral to your lifestyle, the key to native-level fluency.

The acceleration that this activity can bring to your Spanish learning program more than compensates for any amount of embarrassment.

 Having done this myself, I can strongly vouch for the efficacy of labeling all items in your household. I bloated my vocabulary out of proportion just by labeling my world and keeping them on for a month!

Keep in mind that perfection comes from practice. You can retain new words more effectively if you use them in place of the equivalent words in your native tongue as far as possible and wherever practical. For instance, when learning Spanish, substitute ‘uno’ for ‘one’ and ‘cena’ for ‘dinner.’ In time, the words will become second nature to you and you’ll understand them when you hear them spoken. You’ll be amazed at your ability to understand Spanish when you hear it spoken.

 Learning Spanish or any new language does not have to be so painful or painful at all. The beginning may be a little rough, but in time it does get a lot better. You will become fluent if you persevere and make good use of as many tricks and tips as possible.

Spanish Acquisition Through Total Immersion - II

Many Spanish learners, who can afford it, often travel to a Spanish-speaking country seeking the ultimate immersion experience and quick fluency. To be honest, I second this philosophy because being surrounded by only Spanish-speakers for an extended span of time is really a hell of an immersion strategy. There is, however, just one small drawback with this technique. The depth of immersion that comes with living in a Spanish-speaking society is not really such a great idea for absolute rookies. Expect swift demotivation if you start living in a Hispanic society with absolutely no knowledge of the language whatsoever.

So, how do we go about immersing in Spanish with zero prior knowledge? It’s simple. Build a near-perfect immersion environment around you right where you live and it will be a decent groundwork before you finally take the big plunge. I know this is easier said than done, but there are ways to approach this problem as closely as it gets some of which have already been discussed in a previous post, Spanish Acquisition Through Total Immersion I. Let’s check out some more here.

Stealthy immersion through Spanish music

Spanish music is the stealthiest immersion tool
Photo credit: Alan Levine licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Listen to only Spanish music. Yes, music is the easiest thing to enjoy despite the language barrier so, this should come as your natural first stem. Painful as it might sound, you must get rid of every single album in your library that is not in Spanish. Treat this like a quit-smoking program. Set yourself on a challenge to not listen to any non-Spanish song for the next, say, ten months. The good news, however, is that the Latino music scene is way richer than you would expect. No matter what your taste, every known genre is richly represented in this language; reggae, metal, pop, trance, rock...you name it!

In fact, this site has quite a few articles discussing music for learning Spanish in much greater detail. Hence, if you are truly keen on exploring the idea further and find out what bands are recommended or how to maximize absorption listening to Spanish songs, head straight to the section for learning Spanish through music.

Immersion through Spanish language newspapers

Spanish language newspapers immerse, educate, and entertain
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Read only Spanish newspaper and read everyday. And no, you can no longer procastinate saying, “my local newsstand doesn’t have non-English papers.” With the Internet, it is now possible to subscribe to almost any newspaper in the world digitally. A number of feed readers exist for this purpose. The best part about digital feeds is that you don’t even need to have a computer; RSS feeds can easily be read on almost any smartphone known to mankind today. I recommend El Universal® as one of the most respected Latin-American newspapers; closer home in Europe, you have El Mundo® or El País®.

Reading Spanish newspapers is an excellent way to not only acquire some authentic Spanish but also to stay abreast with the latest goings-on in the Hispanic world. It won’t hurt to make an online Spanish news site of your choice your home page. This way, you’ll pick up bits and pieces of Spanish subconsciously every time you go online. Every step matters, no matter how small!

Spanish comics for some light-weight immersion

Read lots and lots of Spanish comic books. Comic books are an excellent source of contemporary Spanish and interesting stories. The cartoon images not only add to the fun aspect of reading, they also make retention of new vocabulary easier as human brain retains pictures more naturally than plain words. Hence, it goes without saying that comic strips are the best way to acquire new phrases and remember them using picture association. If comics are your weakness, I would strongly urge you to check out my article exploring the possibilities at length at Spanish Trips Through Comic Strips.

Writing in Spanish: That old-school immersion technique

Writing Spanish drills it in you real deep
Photo credit: OUCHcharley licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Write. Yes, extensive writing is another wonderful retention technique. Write about anything. Your daily routine, your favorite recipe, a dummy letter to yourself, a description of your local mall, just any nonsense. What matters is that your writing exposes you to more Spanish and any amount of exposure is good exposure. It’s alright if you need to use the dictionary or grammar book before every sentence. I bet you’ll need them less often with time.

I hope it would help to state here that English is not my native tongue and writing has played an infinitely important role in shaping up my English during my childhood. It was my father who must get away with all credits here as he would constantly nudge me to write letters to our relatives in other towns in English. His idea was that I should just write, regardless of whether it makes sense or whether it is grammatically correct. He would make me write leastwise a dozen letters every month when I still went to elementary school. That practice, albeit somewhat forced, built my English so gradually and organically that I was speaking in the language quite fluently long before most Indian kids do. Spanish is no different and the same technique worked just as efficiently when I was learning this language; though this time, the letters were not mailed to my relatives to save them from the ensuing confusion.

Internet as your alternative world

Make Spanish-speaking chat-buddies. I can’t speak enough on the impact having native Spanish-speakers as friends can have on your Spanish acquisition process. They will not only correct you whenever you make mistakes, but rather prove to be immensely interesting reservoirs of colloquial lingo, the street Spanish! This is the easiest way of picking up some Spanish online.

The best part is that even if you don’t actively participate, you will still absorb quite some Spanish just sitting quietly reading what others are chatting. During my initial days learning Spanish I used to spend almost half an hour everyday logged into a Hispanic chatroom passively reading other chatters’ comments and looking up intriguing phrases on Google® or elsewhere. This seemingly time-killing activity had a huge contribution to my knowledge of Spanish. As with everything else, though, consistency and persistence is the key.

Basta por hoy (enough for today). We hope these immersion techniques help you sink deeper in Spanish. Do note that that the stress is on acquiring Spanish instead of learning it. That’s what we did with our native tongues as infants. And smooth acquisition comes with better absorption. And the farther you move from English (or your native language, if it’s non-English), the better you absorb.

Spanish Acquisition Through Total Immersion - I

As is the case with any foreign language, the key to native-level Spanish is simple: Absolute immersion. Immerse yourself as deeply as possible. Build Spanish around you. Bit by bit. Word by word. Phrase by phrase. Until Spanish becomes a second nature to you; until you start thinking in Spanish. When I was new to this idea, I didn’t take it much seriously as it seemed way too easier said than done. But after a few months of experimenting with various techniques of Spanish language immersion, the results were far from disappointing! Read on and I bet learning Spanish will never seem a dead-beat exercise to you anymore.

I understand it can get a tad frustrating in the beginning when you immerse too deep and have to refer to the dictionary way too often to understand every word. But give yourself time and it won’t be difficult to notice the drop in the frequency with which you need to open the big, fat word-bank. In this post, we explore some immersion ideas which should be a part of your Spanish learning process like your life depended on it. Learning Spanish is not as rewarding as absorbing it passively. And absorption is only possible once you immerse completely – Stop learning Spanish and start acquiring it.

Make your computer speak Spanish

A Mac® can easily be made to speak Spanish

The first step, though painful, is to switch to Spanish on that computer of yours. I know that hurts but believe me, it won’t take you more than a week to get comfortable with doing everything on your computer in Spanish!

If you are reading this article on your computer, I would assume you are spending a significant portion of your time everyday communicating with it. Since total immersion means every minute counts, why not start capitalizing on this time? Even if no one else around you, you can surely make your computer talk to you in Spanish and get some serious input with little effort! This comes out of personal experience.

I don’t know if it is easy on Windows®, since my experience is on Apple® systems. Apple® makes it really easy to switch to any language without downloading anything. Just open System Preferences and hit the Language and Text module to be able to change the default system language to Spanish. I did this right in the beginning and I must admit that this simple step went a long way in cutting down my learning curve.

Make your TV speak nothing but Spanish

Unleash the couch potato in you

Photo credit: Aapo Haapanen licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Next, if possible, switch over to Spanish-only channels on your television. At least for once, in the context of learning Spanish, you can safely assume that the couch potato is the winner here. Yes, the more you watch TV, the denser your input; and converting all that input from your TV into Spanish could mean a never-ending reserve of crisp, authentic Spanish right in your living room!

Now, this one, while easy to do in most countries in Europe, North America, and South America, might be an impractical idea for the rest of the world. India, for one, does not have a single channel with Spanish programming. For such learners, the next best thing would be to acquire as much Spanish media (the Internet is a rich resource) as possible and quit watching regular television. Again, this will get frustrating and demotivating as the Spanish on those movies and shows is rapidfire and absolutely incomprehensible to unaccustomed ears. My two cents, just be patient and consistent and give yourself time. My previous post talks more about how to use Spanish media for immersion.

Read nothing but Spanish

Read Spanish...anything in Spanish!

Photo credit: Enokson licensed CC BY 2.0

Reading is a less frustrating and an equally enriching immersion strategy. Acquire a few Spanish books (best are collections of short stories) make it a point to spend time reading leastwise two to three pages everyday. read the same snippet for a few days before moving on the the next one. This is to allow your learning to sink deeper and help you absorb the new grammar constructs and vocabulary better. No need to depend on your local bookstore; Amazon is the richest source of quality reading materials in Spanish or any other popular language. I would also recommend Flipkart®, especially for those in India.

In order to ensure you stay in the game for longer and eliminate any chances of a burn-out, fatigue, or boredom, opt for easy reads, such as small children’s books of fairy tales, fables, graphic novels, or graded readers for kids in elementary schools. Whatever you read, make sure there is loads of pictures or graphic illustration. This will ensure you understand the context better even if not opening up the dictionary for every second word. If possible, newspapers could also serve the purpose while being informative and interesting at the same time.

However, I would strongly advise against e-books or online readers unless you are a Kindle user. The reading experience is most fulfilling if done the traditional way, i.e., real, paper books. The computer screen with it’s radiation glare is far from suitable for long reading sessions.

Another thing is consistency. No matter how much time you dedicate to each of these activities, it is important to stay consistent if you intend to maximize the benefits. No amount of motivation is going to help if you stay immersed for hours on one day and not at all for the next three days. I would also not give you any magic number when it comes to the number of hours you should dedicate to these tasks every day. Because that wouldn’t be immersion. Total, absolute immersion means you should live Spanish every moment of your waking life. So, it does not matter how much time you spend reading as long as you read only Spanish and nothing else whenever you do, even if only for a few minutes. Similarly, it does not matter how much time you spend watching TV as long as it is only Spanish on the screen whenever you turn on the TV and not English or any other language. And trust me, this is far from overkill!

More strategies will be discussed in a future continuation on learning Spanish through total immersion. In the interim, I invite all of you to share with me your views on total immersion as a Spanish-acquisition tool through your comments. Your comments will not only enrich my experience but will also help you share best practices amongst yourselves.

Stop Learning, Start Acquiring

Learning Spanish is easy. We would all have a common answer if asked how we learned our native language and that would almost unanimously be, “Just like that!” Nobody is born with skills of any kind, let alone linguistic abilities. And yet by the time we turn four, we are more than reasonably fluent in at least one language, our native tongue. All this at a time when we were yet to face the grammar-boogie at school! How come? The key is, we didn’t learn our mother tongue – we just absorbed it. We acquired it organically, gradually, steadily, in fits and starts. And we can acquire some easy Spanish in the same fashion!

The laziest way to acquire Spanish

More grammar don't necessarily mean more Spanish

Photo credit: James Bon Tempo licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Why then, must we struggle to acquire a second (or third, or fourth) language when we did none of that for the first? The most natural language acquisition tool is at everyone’s disposal and yet largely ignored. If kids can learn their native language doing nothing beyond listening for the first 2-3 years of their life, why can’t adults?

Yes, the laziest way to learn Spanish is essentially the most effective and optimal unless all you aspire is being able to greet some foreign tourists and order a cerveza (beer) in a foreign restaurant. My attempts on this blog are more relevant to those who intend to be “fluent” in Spanish, indistinguishable from the natives.

Do you know what the easiest part of learning a foreign language is? It is the acquisition of every possible resource (books, media, etc.) around the activity and browsing through the first few pages of more than a dozen grammar books and phrasebooks. Now, over to the hard part. The hardest bit is choosing the right resource to start with and then sustaining the learning process with consistency. Let’s try to sort out this problem before proceeding with our learning.

So, is grammar totally useless?

Alright, so we have already established that the most effective learning strategy for a native-like proficiency is to maximize input (listening and reading) in the target language, in this case Spanish. However, since we are no longer kids, it is extremely easy for boredom and demotivation to set in once we have received a few hours of incomprehensible input in an alien language. That’s where our conventional learning resources (grammar books and dictionaries) kick in. Note that the idea here is to learn “in context”. Traditionally, we are taught to mug up vocabulary and grammar before we even consider any application of the acquired language in a practical context. And the idea being discussed here is exactly the opposite. First, get the context and then use grammar to understand the speech in that context.

This will work only if you are learning Spanish for a test

EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

In layman’s terms, the approach would be to focus on maximizing input in the target language first and then use dictionaries and grammar to understand the sentences and words. This way, retention would be more permanent in nature in contrast to mugging up rules and meanings. Acquire a collection of Spanish videos (movies or shows) and not more than one grammar book and one dictionary. Everything you do from here on must be single-mindedly geared toward “acquiring” Spanish and not just learning it. What’s the difference, you ask? Well, huge. Learning is what you do in a classroom where you do things like homework, mugging up, reading, writing, and recitations against your will. You do those things not because you want to be fluent in the language but because you have been asked to do them by your teacher and because you need to do them in order to pass your tests. Acquiring is different. As an infant, you didn’t have to pass any test, nor were you under any teacher’s mandate to cram up words after words off that dictionary. You just absorbed what you heard being spoken all around you, all the time. No reasoning. No analysis. Just plain and simple absorption. Word-by-word, syllable-by-syllable, and phrase-by-phrase. Until you developed the capacity and confidence to produce them for yourself after a few years of intense input. This, my friend, is acquisition and it is way more interesting, natural, and effective than dead-beat learning.

But nobody speaks Spanish around me!

Movies are an excellent source of unfettered Spanish input!

Photo credit: Franco Folini licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

In today’s world of the ever-pervasive Internet, this excuse lo longer holds water. An entire industry spends billions of dollars every year, year after year, to ensure you get as much Spanish in your life as you are satisfied with. The showbiz. There are hundreds and thousands of Spanish language movies and television shows the showbiz industry dishes out every year. Why shouldn’t you be exploiting this perennial source of some of the most authentic Spanish to your advantage?

Maintain a strict regimen of watching the same movie or show leastwise three to four times every day. Tempting as it might get, avoid touching the dictionary or grammar reference or even turning on the subtitles while watching the video on the first day. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the visuals and try to relate the story as a dumb kid. On day two, watch the show with Spanish subtitles. Not English! Sporadically, refer to the dictionary to look up unfamiliar words and refer to the grammar book for the correct construction of certain words indicated as verbs in the dictionary. Continue with the same movie for at least a week before changing for the effect to sink in.

Sounds mundane, doesn’t it? Just be patient and hang on for a couple of months and you’ll notice subtle improvements in your comprehension. Work toward that reward and you won’t be disappointed. It is true that learning Spanish calls for discipline and patience – Spanish should be all around you at all the time! In the coming posts, we will review some innovative ways to retain the newly acquired Spanish vocabulary and grammar concepts.

Until then, wish you luck!